Today we share how we made some zesty, zingy, all natural Homemade Lemon Syrup.
It takes about 30 minutes to make. You can use homemade lemon syrup with your Bonne O Carbonation System for intense, lemony homemade sparkling lemonade. It's also a great base for a boatload of other lemon-based sparkling waters, sparkling infusions, custom sodas, and bubbly cocktails. We'll show you a classic favorite and how to creatively twist it at the end of this post.
To make the homemade lemon syrup we started with 9 medium lemons.
At this point we caught Lilo's attention. She's our 11 yr old retriever. She still gets excited about a lot of things, but not this.
We cut the lemons and juiced them. It yields about one and a half cups of lemon juice. We also set aside about a handful of lemon zest.
We added a cup of sugar, a cup of water and the zest to a pot. We stirred the sugar, water and zest until the sugar was completely dissolved and brought it to a boil. Then we lowered the heat and simmered the mixture for 15 minutes.
Then we took the mixture off the heat, allowed it to cool for a bit and strained out the zest. We added the lemon juice and put it in a mason jar.
Voilà! The syrup will keep for around 2 weeks in your fridge.
If you want to get creative with the syrup making process, add different herbs to the mixture when cooking the water, sugar and zest mixture to blend their flavors right into the syrup. Some great combinations are fresh thyme, mint, lavender, rosemary and basil. Each will add a unique undertone to your creation. If you are using your Bonne O Carbonation System, you can infuse any of these herbs into your sparkling lemonade by adding the fresh herbs to the bottle before carbonating.
In future posts we'll go through the steps to make the drinks and how to twist them for extra creativity & deliciousness. As a preview, here is an example of how using your Bonne O Carbonation System can seriously twist up some classic favorites.
Classic Fresh Sparkling Lemonade. On a hot summer day, can you beat it? Well.... yes you can. Take 3/4 of a cup of vodka and add it to your Bonne O Carbonating Bottle before carbonating. Now that's a Hard Fresh Sparkling Lemonade and it rocks. You just carbonated the lemonade AND the vodka. Tell me that isn't the smoothest, seriously carbonated, most delicious bubbly cocktail you ever laid your lips on. So that dials it up to 10 right? Done.
Wait a minute. It goes to 11? That's crazy talk. Yes it is. Use half the lemon syrup and instead add a half lemon of real lemon wedges to the bottle along with the vodka before carbonating. What do we have? It's a Skinny Hard Fresh Sparkling Lemonade with all the naturally intense pressure-infused essence & flavor from real lemons and yet half the calories. OK, that's enough. Time for a beverage.
